Life, Laughs, Toddlers and Tea

Laziness, Love and Cooking Shows

Cooking is not for the weak hearted. That is a fact. It is also most definitely not for anyone with a dearth of patience because cooking is really not as easy as some people (and all cooking shows) will have you believe.

Nowadays it seems that every time I turn on the TV, there’s a cooking show of one sort or another on almost every other channel. The shows vary of course, from cooking competitions (I’m looking at you MasterChef and your never ending reruns!), to theme based How-To-Cook shows, to restaurant-based reality shows. Out of these, it’s the How-to-Cook shows that really mess with you: they make cooking seem so easy but the minute you buckle down and try to replicate one of their dishes, you realise that there’s a reason those Chefs are known as professionals, and you are not. I was never much of a cook before I got married, though I did always want to learn. Its just that between the jobs, the studying and the social life, I never seemed to get the chance to really learn. Or I was just lazy, whatever. Laziness is a funny thing though, its easier to be lazy at the time, but it always comes back to bite you in the ass before long. Just look at all those sleepless, hysteria fuelled nights spent trying to finish research papers that should have been started weeks ago instead of being left till the last moment. It was laziness that left me in those positions and laziness that has brought me to this point: married and suddenly called upon to cook something more complicated than a cucumber sandwich.

This counts as cooking, right?

Why did no one tell me how hard cooking really is? Why have all these cooking shows been lying to me all these years? How the hell do they make it look so easy?? They rope you in with their seemingly easy recipes and delicious looking food and a few hours later leave you wondering what went wrong when you end up with something that definitely does not look like the pasta that Jamie Oliver effortlessly put together in 15 minutes flat.

This… this can’t be right…right?

I mean, who would have thought that TV shows could lie to you, right? Right.

So here I am trying to learn a skill that most people seem to pick up so effortlessly while I’m stuck with the dubious goal of producing something that does not poison the household, never mind how it tastes. One thing I have learned: when causing widespread illness is an actual possibility, the subtleties of taste quickly take a backseat.

Oh well, you know what they say, if at once you don’t succeed, try try again! One good thing that has come out of my recent forays in the kitchen is that it has inadvertently led to a greater love and respect for my husband. The poor guy stoically consumes whatever I place in front of him, even when I know for a fact that it’s not that good. And not only does he eat it, he doesn’t ridicule or make fun of it but instead always manages to have something positive to say about it. In short, I’m married to an angel and just didn’t know it. That, or he just doesn’t want to piss off a hormonal pregnant woman with a brand new set of kitchen knives. Nah, he’s an angel, simple as that.

Thanks for the advice April, I can use all the help I can get when it comes to adding variety to the menu! I’ve gotten better at cooking since this post but I tend to stick to the handful of things I know how to make and it can get pretty dull eating the same thing every few days >.<